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I wish my dad was at my graduation today. I miss him. Oh God, how I needed him. It’s seriously all I’ve ever wanted since he wasn’t able to attend my 6th grade or high school graduation. It’s what I looked forward to the most about him getting out of jail after 10 years. I’d be lying if I said he was not the reason I took so long to complete my college education. Heck, I was so freaking glad my graduation wouldn’t happen until he was out. I wanted to wait for him. I wanted him to be there. I needed him. But instead of him filling up that seat next to my mom and brothers, all I had of him was an apology text and one missed call from him. The first I received in the bathroom, when I was checking up on my makeup and hair, making sure my cap wouldn’t fall off with a tip of my head.

“Ola mi amor perdón por llamarte antes que pases una muy bonita graduación te juró qué me duele no estar con tigo en tu graduación”‘Hello my love, I am sorry for calling you before you have a beautiful graduation. I swear it hurts that I can’t be there with you at your graduation.’

Instantly I felt my eyes well up with tears, a knot in my throat. My friend comes out of the stall and I push it all back, focusing instead on the ceremony and the fact that my family wasn’t there yet. Seriously, again? We rush back to our art friends just as the line starts pushing out the door. My father is pushed out of my mind as the graduation goes on. I’m too busy trying to keep up with my friend’s jokes and our Dean’s sass.
Towards the end of the graduation I remember I have not wished my father a happy father’s day, despite Every. Damn. Speaker. Mentioning their father and wishing them a happy father’a day. I send him greetings and think nothing of it as I stand to move my tassel from the right to the left side of the cap as a symbol of our passing into graduate-hood. We walk out. All along the sides there are people crowding around to take pictures of the graduates. Again, I do not see my mother’s face. I shake off my disappointment and make plans to meet up with my friends at the art building after I dash away to find my family. Again, I do not find them. I look down at my phone to call them only to see I’ve missed a call from my dad. I rush to call back but, what would I say? The emotion now hits harder than before and I click ‘end.’ The knot is tighter, the tears fill my vision and I know I cannot show everyone this side. Today was supposed to be emotional for other reasons, not for the pain that’s been granted me since I was 12.
Instead I have father’s day making a mockery of me as again I have to spend another year without my dad. Only this time, it was something bigger. It was that much more important. And now I’m just left to wonder, how much more will he miss out on? How much more will I miss out on? That ticket that went to my aunt, the one that always goes to my aunt, should have been his. I don’t know what to do. It’s 3am and all I’m doing is crying the stupid makeup off. I hate this, I really do. No matter what I do or what happens, this will never change. I will never have my dad as I want him. He is still only pictures and short phone calls and once a year visits. He’s out of prison but we aren’t out of the system. Happy Father’s Day indeed.

I don’t exactly have a letterbox. I figured I could just take a picture of a letter in an actual box/basket I have. It could have been cute, maybe funny. But I’ll go with the reality and post what has been a ‘letter/mailbox’ for me for the past 7 or so years, since I moved from Texas. Here you go. Unfortunately we don’t have any of them fancy/homey letterboxes that most people have. Also, as I’m still a college student, I tend to change these quite often. I admit I have not learned my address here at my current school apartment. I just ship everything to my mom’s place. At least she stays put for more than a year!

Also, we juuust got this at school. I may or may not be using it in the future haha. I thought it was a scam the first time I read about it! Have you seen anything like it?

Best Childhood Memory..

I can’t exactly say I have a ‘best’ or ‘favorite’ childhood memory. I really feel like I had a good childhood overall, filled with lots of memories of my cousins and I making up stories and acting them out, or singing mariachi songs with my father, or visiting the bookstore with my mom. They all come in snippets, too, so it’s hard to think of any one concrete memory as sometimes they end up jumbling together into one.

When in Texas, I lived in one place nearly my whole life. It was this half-acre plot in what had been an orange-grove in South Texas. You could see the evidence in the many orange, grapefruit, and lime trees throughout the neighborhood and in our yard. Our little home was raised off the ground by bricks evenly spaced under the house, leaving stray cats, dogs, chickens, and sometimes snakes to sneak their way in under the house and make a home for their litters. There was a row of trees lined up along the front of our yard. I’m guessing this was primarily to mark our land, before fences and gates started getting popular. How magnificent those days must have been! So much easier to call on your neighbors and not having to cage yourself and your family and possessions in. In the “back”yard there was also these two giant trees that we would climb. There was always a picnic table under one of them. Behind those was a rather large shed. Almost the size of a small house, really. Actually, it was bigger than the one bedroom house that my aunt resided in when she lived behind my grandmother’s house. A house I, too, had lived in before my parents got our house.

In another half-acre lot over to our left lived my cousins Marty and Lupita, and their parents. Oh, the mischief we’d get into. It wasn’t anything necessarily bad. We just liked having fun, sometimes in a not-so-nice way; some of these included pushing each other off the bed, throwing/kicking footballs and soccer balls at each other, playing wrestling and boxing with each other. Oh wait, that was all me to Marty. haha Hey! He’s older than me by two years, AND pushed my brother and me around when we were younger. I can have some fun with him. 😛 Did I mention he was head over heels in love with Britney Spears and claimed he would someday marry her? hahaha Marty has a younger sister named Lupita (after the Virgen de Guadalupe); she’s about 5, 6 years younger than him. I absolutely loved being with her. We’re both writers and storytellers. I do strongly believe that this started from when we were younger and would create stories together. Remember those trees at the front of my yard? Well, after a while, they would slant over each other and create a sort of canopy. As we were small enough, we’d crawl under the space and sit around on some small logs we had placed in a circle. We’d pretend to have tea parties there, or pretend we were sitting around a great big campfire! There, we made up plenty of stories by either talking about our ideas or by playing pretend. Those were seriously some of the most memorable times of my life. I remember this one time that Marty, Lupita, Juan (the eldest of my brothers, younger than me by three years), and I had a nighttime picnic under Marty and Lupita’s porch. We were still pretty young; Marty must not have been older than 12. Our parents had packed us crackers, cheese, and other small snack-foods along with a blue and white checkered picnic blanket. We had all this laid out and were in the process of eating when out of the blue, one of the three jumped up and screamed. Our parents came out, and it turned out there had been a scorpion just behind us the whole time. That interruption sure made its mark in my memory.

There are just so so many other memories I can write about, both good and bad, but I think I’ll stop there for tonight. I realize that this post comes a day late, and that I should be posting the 5th challenge day. I had thought about not posting Sunday’s challenge, as I’d been busy the entire day and didn’t get to write anything. Still, I figured I may as well write it up now and actually complete the challenge in full. It’s still my goal! I hope you enjoyed this read. Do you have any stories to tell? Share them with us! If you liked this and would like to see more, you can ‘like’ this or follow me. I’ll be posting at least once a day! If you decide to follow the challenge yourself, be sure to tell me! I’d love to read what you have. 🙂